


Eren

by italicized



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Coming Out, Hidden Talents, Homophobia, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Top Eren Yeager
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-28
Updated: 2018-10-28
Packaged: 2019-08-09 02:24:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,001
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16441214
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/italicized/pseuds/italicized
Summary: Eren was four years old when he moved from his small home in the country to Detroit. After a while, he made friends and slowly adapted to city-life. However, this all comes crashing down when his father leaves him and his mother to fend for themselves during the summer before his senior year.Just when he starts to figure everything out for the better, a new student named Levi Ackerman makes a sudden appearance. Out of no where, feelings start developing. Terrified, he tries his best to suppress them.





	Eren

The almost completely silent noise of her humming drifted through the twilight air of August 4, 2000. Glancing up at the sky, she gazed at the gentle colors of orange and pink that stretched from the slowly sinking sun as it drifted below the horizon. The temperature was slowly starting to descend into the low seventies as time went on, and the faint buzz of the cicadas was fading away until it was completely replaced by chirping of crickets. 

White linen danced in the low light, only stropping as it was pulled from its place on the clothesline and folded, deposited in a basket near the woman’s bare feet. Glancing past the posts of the clothes’ line, she watched as her husband slowly wandered his way back to the house from across the field with their son on his heels, chatting excitedly about something as the older man nodded along. 

Smiling, she offered the pair a small wave. The simple, golden ring on her finger seemed to almost glow in the dim light of evening as her husband returned the gesture with a smile stretching across his face. Curling her toes into the grass, she was just starting to be able to feel the cool condensation of the night collecting on the ground as she plucked the last white sheet off of the line and folded it neatly. 

Picking up the basket, she meandered her way over to the front door of their two story house. The family dog panted from his comfortable place on the porch, his tail thudding on the floorboards as his owner approached closer. Leaning down, the woman offered her pet a small pat on the head before dawdling through the swing door, letting it slam shut behind her. 

Her son immediately rushed over to her from where he was standing in the kitchen, already babbling on about what he had seen during his walk with his father that night. She listened to him with earnest while they both walked down the hallway to the lien closet; her restocking it, her son describing a huge buck that they had seen in the meadow out in the back property. 

“That’s quite a story,” she offered in a gentle tone as soon as he had tapered off from his tale, setting down the basket onto the tarnished floorboards of the old farmhouse, worn and scratched from years of use and the excited paws of dogs, “did Dad see it, too?” 

Her son raised his hands up in the air, patiently asking to be picked up, despite mentioning it, “he’s the one who showed it to me! Dad saw him outback and told me to be really quiet!”

She smiled at her four year-old’s excitement and gently scooped him up into her arms, “and were you very quiet?” 

“Yes!” He grinned brightly, “because if I would of been loud I would’ve scared him away! And I don’t want to scare him away!” He almost whispered the last part.

“Well,” the older said in a whisper as she leaned in to his ear, “you better keep your voice down, because maybe he can still hear you. If you’re too loud, he might run away!” 

Her husband walked out of the kitchen, smiling at the sight of his wife and son eagerly chatting away as if they were friends rather than mother and son. Crossing his arms, he leaned against the doorway. They were covered in grease from working on the tractor earlier that day and still had yet to shower before supper. 

“Eren, did you tell Mom what you saw today?”

“Yes! I said there was a deer out back with the biggest horns I’ve ever seen!” He was still speaking quieter than usual, but he raised his arms in the air to show emphasis, almost hitting his mom in the face with a tiny hand in the process.

Smiling at her son’s general innocence and care-freeness, she slowly eased him back down onto his feet. She slightly nudged him towards the bathroom, “well, you can tell me more about it at dinner, now, go clean up so you can help me set the table.”

Eren ran to the bathroom excitedly. It was strange quirk of his, but ever since he had been able to walk, he had always enjoyed setting the table and helping getting dinner ready- which was the complete opposite of his father’s attitude towards the subject. Which was weird in itself, because Eren had adopted most of his father’s mannerisms since birth, such as his walk and the way that he was so headstrong. But, it would make sense that he adopted some of his mother’s as well. 

“Carla,” her husband called from the kitchen, “the oven just went off, do you want me take the chicken out?” 

Carla brushed her hands on her jeans and strode through the doorway. Grisha was standing next to the oven, holding the door open as he peered inside at the tin-foil-covered glass dish. He looked up as she entered and moved to the side, not trusting himself to mess with the oven. 

She chuckled at her husband’s actions and grabbed an oven mitt, pulling the dish out of the oven and setting it on the stovetop to let it cool before they ate. Grisha rested his hands on his hips and watched his wife prepare the food for dinner, pulling out plates and filling them with the chicken and vegetables she had made. 

“Hey,” he suddenly said, making Carla look up from the food, “uh, I got a call back about that job in Detroit.” 

Carla bit the inside of her cheek, “and?” She didn’t mean to be so blunt and frontward with her words, but she had been listening to him discuss possible jobs throughout the state for the past few weeks, and to be quite frank, she was tired with the returning conversation. 

“They said that they’d take me at GM. 110K a year,” he didn’t look up from his hands on the countertop. 

Carla slammed down the plate she was holding and walked to the other side of the kitchen. She ripped open the fridge to get out the milk. Slamming it down onto the countertop, she didn’t respond. 

“That’s 50 more than my salary, as of now,” he said it as if she didn’t understand the number.

Not willing to be silent any more, she turned around and crossed her arms, “yeah, so you just want us to abandon our entire life so you can follow your dad’s line of work?” 

Grisha squeezed his eyes shut, lowering his head, “Carla, you know that’s not the cas-”

“Then what is it?” She was pissed, “I worked my ass off for this house and you’re willing to just throw it all away for a possibility of a job? What if we sell everything, move out there, and suddenly there isn’t a position any more? Where would we stay? What would we fucking do, Grisha?” 

“Honey, you know I don’t want to move away from here- this is our life, but as of now, we’re in thousands of dollars in debt,” he lowered his voice so Eren wouldn’t overhear and ask questions, “you know that. I know that. If we don’t sell this place, you _know_ what will happen.” 

Carla sighed and shoved the palms of her hands into her eyes, “This is our home. We can’t just leave. I worked so hard for this place-”

Grisha sighed and grabbed his wife’s shoulders, “Carla…” He paused, “I don’t know if we have a choice.”

They stared at each other in silence. 

 

______________________________

 

“Yo, Eren, what’s up, man? I haven’t seen you since June,” Jean held out his hand, smacking Eren’s and then curling his fingers with the other male’s. It was the first day of their senior year, and they were standing together outside of the school, watching people walk past them into the building. 

“Nothin’,” he smiled and pulled back his hand, shoving it into his pocket, “just kinda hung out at home and helped my mom. Ever since Dad left she’d been kind of hard on herself,” he watched as Jean’s face instantly morphed into understanding.

 

“Yeah, I get it man,“ one of Jean’s friend’s, Trevon, came up next to them and slapped Jean’s hand. 

“Sup, Tre,” Eren did the same as Jean, “I heard about you breaking it off with Krista over the summer, I thought it was going good for you guys,” he wasn’t even concerned with starting a conversation about their breakup. They were such close friends that it wasn’t much of an issue.

 

Tre just shrugged his shoulders, “I dunno. I actually thought it was gonna last for a while but apparently her dad wasn’t with it,” he scratched at his head. 

“Aw, that sucks ass,” suddenly, Connie joined in on the conversation from where he had been talking to his other friend’s nearby, wrapping his arms around Tre’s and Jean’s shoulders. “That dude’s fuckin’s insane. It’s probably best that y’all broke it off.” Suddenly, a look of confusion crossed over Connie’s face as he glanced at Tre, “I thought she was lesbian, though?” 

“Nah, she’s bi,” Jean said, taking out his phone and texting someone disinterestedly. 

“Bi?” Eren and Connie asked in confusion.

 

Jean glanced up, “yeah, she likes dudes and chicks. She was talking with that one Ymir chick for a while before Tre.” He pocketed his phone. 

Tre looked almost confused, “so her dad’s okay with her dating a chick but not a black guy?”

Everyone burst out laughing at that. At the commotion, some of Connie’s friends came over and joined in. Eren recognized a few of them from classes last year, but he didn't know all of them. There was Conner, Reiner, Darius, Brad, and Armin. Eren knew two of them but the rest were practically strangers. They all seemed alright, though. Brad seemed a bit on the edgy side of things but he wasn’t necessarily too bad. 

They stood outside talking for a while before the bell rang from inside the school. They all bid their farewells and made their way to their homeroom classes. Eren was pleased to find out that his first hour consisted mostly of people that he didn’t absolutely hate, even though none of his close friends were in that period. 

There were a few people that he didn’t recognize whatsoever. Overall, he counted three new students. One was an asian girl with dark black hair. Eren had to admit that she was pretty damn attractive. 

She had a pretty average body for the most part, not exactly skin and bones but definitely on the leaner side. She also appeared to be strong. Eren could assume that she was an athlete based on the strong muscle on her arms and toned legs under her jeans. He could already see himself hitting on her in the future. He hadn’t had a girlfriend since his sophomore year and he was feeling a bit deprived. 

The second kid was a transfer student from Britain. Every single year, Eren’s school would take in a transfer student from somewhere else in the world. Last year, they were Australian, and the year before that they were from Pakistan. He seemed like an alright dude, just a little bit quiet.

The last kid didn’t say a thing to anyone in the class as he walked in and took a seat in the back. To be honest, he looked extremely bored with everyone and everything. He had pitch black hair and was shorter than most of the other students in the class. He didn’t really appear to be angry, he just seem disinterested. 

Eren made eye-contact with him during class, and his previous thoughts of him not appearing angry went out the window as soon as the shorter teen practically shot him with a cold glare before looking back at the teacher. 

He didn’t really see himself getting along with him.


End file.
